The term "base-load plant" is often heard as referring to a power plant working 24/7 due to the high fixed costs and low marginal costs unlike the "peak" power plants.
However, the literature on power system planning
[H.Seifi, M.S. Sepasian. Electric Power System: Planning Issues, Algorithms and Solutions. Spriner, 2011], [Electric power systems: Advanced forecasting techniques and optimal generation scheduling. (Ed.) Joao P. S. Catalao. CRC Press, 2012] etc
and economics
[D.R.Biggar, M.R.Hesamzadeh. The economics of electricity markets. Wiley, 2014]
generally ignores this concept.
Does it mean that in fact the concept of a base-load power plant describes the ability (or willingness) of a power plant operator to bid for delivery-all-hours-of-all-days contracts, based on a specific power plant economic model? - So that the bidding procedure itself does not depend on the type of the generator as far as it is ready to bid
As you suggest, base-load power is power that does not follow cyclic variations in demand. This is usually less because of high fixed costs and low operating costs than because of the technical inability of the plant to vary load rapidly. Increasingly, traditional base-load facilities are starting to follow demand to a small and sometimes large extent. The increased presence of intermittent, non-dispatchable renewables in the power mix is significantly complicating the dispatch methods and effectiveness.
An example of a base load power plant is a nuclear plant. In addition to the technical inflexibility of the plant, the costs of ramping up (or increasing production) or down (decreasing production) may be too prohibitive. For this reason, nuclear plants are run at a constant production rate that supplies the "base" demand (or that proportion of demand that hardly vary from day to day. For example, the total demand is 100 units, with 30% of the load varying from peak to trough. Given this load profile, we can say that 70 units are needed at all times. This is the base load demand that is often supplied by base load capacity such as nuclear and in some cases, coal or gas.
Here you can find more about flexibility of conventional power generation technologies (be focused on page 19):
http://www.eurelectric.org/media/61388/flexibility_report_final-2011-102-0003-01-e.pdf
I can just add that base load power plants also have high cost of switching them on, so it is usually not cost-effective if you plan to switch them off for less than 2 days (for coal-fired power plants)
As it has been already discussed the base plant choice is mostly due to the inability and uneconomical reasons of operating the particular plant for economy and reliability.
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